1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to polygon filling. More particularly, it relates to a system and method for generating an optimum set of polygon fill rectangles for input to, for example, an artwork generator for preparing glass masters.
2. Background Art
Artwork generators are a vital part of a printed circuit board (PCB) and substrate manufacturing line. These machines are used to create the glass masters for all printed circuitry. A series of shapes are passed to the artwork generator and these are then traced onto a glass master. The glass master is then used to produce actual product.
While all artwork generators share the above similarity, they are different in many ways. One key distinguishing characteristic is whether the machine is capable of natively handling polygon shapes. If a particular artwork generator is not capable of natively handling a polygon, then it can be adapted to support these multi-sided shapes by providing separate (non-native) software to transform the polygon into a series of rectangular fill shapes. These rectangular fill shapes are also referred to as flashes or stripes or lines. This approach has been in place for years and generally exists on mainframe systems capable of performing the CPU intensive mathematics required for the analysis and fill of each polygon with a series of narrow rectangles. With complicated shapes, such as those found on a typical substrate, the volume of fill data can be enormous. This causes problems saving, loading, and manipulating these designs. Thus, there is a need in the art for a polygon fill system and method which minimizes the number of rectangles required to fill the polygon. There is also a need in the art for a workstation based polygon fill application which is a customizable application capable of accepting fill rectangle tolerances, rectangle overlap amounts, maximum number of borders, and many other parameters.
Artwork generators also are different in the manner in which a line is exposed. Some artwork machines work by opening an aperture as wide as a required line width. This aperture is then moved along the length of a line to expose the glass. Still other machines have variable size apertures which open up to expose the entire line in a single flash. There is a need in the art for a polygon fill system and method which is adaptable to the artwork generator selected for use such that all of the polygon fill rectangles conform to any and all machine limitations, thereby avoiding the need for additional data manipulation.
It is an object of the invention to provide an improved system and method for polygon fill.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a polygon fill application which is workstation based.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a workstation based polygon fill application which is capable of accepting user supplied parameters including fill rectangle tolerances, rectangle overlap amounts, and maximum number of borders so that all polygon fill rectangles conform to the selected artwork generator's machine tolerances and limitations.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a system and method for producing a minimal quantity of rectangles to fill a polygon, thereby reducing artwork generator run time.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a system and method utilizing a shapes analysis and manipulation tool to perform all required shape analysis and manipulation.